Introduction

This site has been prepared with the intention of sharing some advice with other record collectors about the process of renovating, playing and archiving those historical recorded performances. Professional record restoration is now so advanced that some astonishingly good transfers are available but this site is mainly aimed at amateur enthusiasts who own 78s which have not been transferred to CDs.

Shellac 78s can played on wind-up gramophones using steel or fibre needles fixed to a heavy sound box. The result provides nostalgic recollections of former times, and the business of winding up the gramophone and changing needles is a fondly remembered routine for many people.

Unfortunately, even a single playing of a mint condition record can result in a very marked deterioration in its surface quality. Subsequent playings will produce noises that were not previously heard. The recording engineers of the time went to great lengths to produce records faithful to the original sounds, and acoustic playback on a wind-up gramophone fails to do justice to their considerable technical ingenuity and talents.

Electrical reproduction has its drawbacks too. Early magnetic pickups were massive and unwieldy, using needles which damaged record surfaces nearly as much as the old wind-up gramophones. The introduction of hard sapphire and diamond styli fitted into lighter pickups produced an improvement, especially when coupled to high fidelity electronic amplification and well designed speaker enclosures, but were intended for vinyl records rather than shellac 78s.

In the 21st. century, the serious collector is faced with other problems. Most hi-fi systems have only one type of reproduction curve, designed exclusively for long playing records. It is not easy to find turntables capable of revolving at 78 rpm and even harder to get one that is adjustable to speed or 80, or whatever is needed for a particular recording. Magnetic pickups need replacing, but are there any suitable replacements? Even a diamond stylus will wear down after prolonged use.

What can be done about it? One answer is to transfer all of one's collection on to a new medium. Magnetic tape is not the archivist's ideal solution. However, most PCs have a CD-RW drive installed which can be used to produce audio CDs. For high capacity storage of audio files DVD recording drives offer even more space. For external storage USB compatible hard drives are becoming affordable. There is an increasing amount of high quality restoration software reaching the market, at a steadily decreasing price. Even if the present generation of audio CDs and DVDs has a limited lifetime, it will be longer than tape; and when required, digital recordings can be transferred faultlessly to whatever storage technology emerges to replace CD.

Information on this website is laid out in sequence so clicking the "NEXT" icon will move you in the right direction. After you've tried some of these ideas for yourself, you may be very pleasantly surprised at how good the original gramophone records really were!